In known mobile communication systems, when a terminal device (called an “edge user”) which is present in an end area of the cell of a base station apparatus, transmits information to the base station apparatus, the terminal device must perform the transmission by using higher electric power in comparison with a terminal device present in a central area of the cell of the base station apparatus. However, information transmission from a terminal device as an edge user may occur interference with a cell adjacent to the cell to which the relevant terminal device belongs.
In order to solve such a problem, it is effective to perform a high-speed transmission power control, as defined in a W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access). However, a standard called “LTE” does not employ such a high-speed transmission power control.
Therefore, a technique such as FFR (Fractional Frequency Reuse) is effective which allocates an individual frequency band to each edge user belonging to a different cell, thereby preventing interference between adjacent cells (see, for example, Non-Patent Document 1).
That is, in FFR, when a terminal device is present in a central area of a cell, any of the entire band which can be allocated to the terminal device is allocated the terminal device, and when the terminal device is present in an end area of a cell, the terminal device and an adjacent cell share a band to be used. Therefore, when employing FFR, it is necessary for the base station apparatus to estimate whether or not each terminal device is an edge user.
In a generally known method of estimating whether or not a terminal device is an edge user, the terminal device measures reception power from the base station apparatus. When the measured value is lower than a predetermined threshold, it is estimated that the terminal device is present in an end area of the relevant cell. When the measured value is higher than or equal to the threshold, it is estimated that the terminal device is present in a central area of the cell.
In addition, Patent Document 1 discloses a method of estimating whether or not a terminal device is an edge user, and performing wireless resource allocation based on the estimated result.